Short Bio
Dr. Fahad Saeed is Full Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU), Miami FL. He received his PhD in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2010. He was trained as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Fellow in the Systems Biology Center at National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda MD from Aug 2010 to January 2014 respectively, under the supervision of Mark Knepper. Prior to joining FIU, Prof. Saeed was a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at Western Michigan University (WMU), Kalamazoo Michigan since Jan 2014. He was tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at WMU in August 2018. He has served as a visiting scientist in world-renowned prestigious institutions such as Department of Bio-Systems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE), ETH Zurich, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) and Epithelial Systems Biology Laboratory (ESBL) at National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Saeed’s research interests are at the intersection of machine-learning, high performance computing and real-world applications, especially in computational biology. He is the director of Precision Computational Health and Biomedical Data Science Lab (Saeed Lab) at FIU. His lab develops machine-learning models, combined with high-performance computing, and data science approaches, to study the functional genomics (proteomics), and organization of the human brain and its function in the context of prediction, diagnosis and characterization of biomarkers specific to disorders such as epilepsy, ADHD, Autism, and Alzheimer’s. His research has been funded by NVIDIA, Intel/Altera, Xilinx, National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) including the highly prestigious NSF CAREER, and NIH R01 (and R01-equivalent R35 MIRA) grants. More information about his lab research activities can be found at https://pcdslab.github.io/.
He also maintains a webpage at https://prof-s.github.io
Complete list of publications is available at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IPXv-GQAAAAJ&hl=en
Honors and Awards
- Excellence in Research and Creative Activities Award, Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Science (KFSCIS), FIU, Dec 2024
- FIU Top Scholar, Research and Creative Activities , Florida International University, Sept 2022 CEC News Page
- Keynote Speaker at the 14th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BICOB). More info here: BiCOB-2022 KeyNote Certificate
- Excellence in Applied Research Award, School of Computing and Information Science (SCIS), Florida International University (FIU), Dec 2020
- Distinguished Research and Creative Scholarship Award, Office of Vice President of Research WMU, Feb 2018
- NSF CAREER Award, 2017-2022
- ACM Senior Member, May 2017
- Outstanding New Researcher Award, College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS), Western Michigan University, Jan 2016 (1 faculty member gets the award in a single year for the entire college consisting of 7 academic departments)
- IEEE Senior Member, March 2015
- NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award, Feb 2015 - Feb 2018
- Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE), National Institutes of Health (NIH), June 2012 (Official award ceremony and US\$1000 travel grant)
- Travel award from Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), Summers 2009.
- Recipient of Think Swiss Scholarship, by the Government of Switzerland for two years (2007 and 2008).
- Travel award from D-BSSE ETH Zurich, Summers 2008.
RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS
Machine-Learning for health and biomedical data, proteomics, neuroinformatics, computational systems biology, high-performance computing
EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION
Research Fellowship, Computational Systems Biology, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD. (2011-2014)
Postdoctoral Training, Computational Proteomics, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD. (2010-2011)
PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago IL USA. (2006-2010)
BSc Engg, Electrical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. (2002-2006)
External Research Funds
Prof. Saeed has been awarded over US$ 7.43 million in external research funds - with more than US$ 6.05 million as a PI since 2014 (approx. US$ 700k per year). Most of the external research funds are competitively awarded from Federal Agencies such as National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Intramural funds and computing allocations are not included in this amount.
- National Science Foundation (NSF) IIS-2530255 [US$ 600,000], “Collaborative Research: CISE-ANR:III: Small: Leveraging External Data for Enhanced Understanding and Causal Attribution of Anomalies in Wastewater Networks”, Fahad Saeed (PI), with Kamal Premaratne (univ. Of Miami) and Helena Solo-Gabriele (Univ. of Miami), Benferhat Salem (Artois University, France), DELENNE Carole (Université de Montpellier France), and Nanee Chahinian (Aix Marseille University (Polytech Marseille/IUSTI)), Feb 2026 - Jan 2029 (combined funding of US$1.2 Million with 600k from French ANR, and 600k from NSF) NSF Award Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) R35GM153434 [US$ 1.75 million], “Machine Learning Models for big data omics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), June 2024 - June 2029 (single PI grant: MIRA R35 Outstanding Investigator mechanism) NIH Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) OAC-2312599 [US$ 600,000], ``OAC Core: High Performance Computing Algorithms and Software for large-scale Mass Spectrometry based Omics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), Sept 2023 - Aug 2026 NSF Award Page
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National Science Foundation (NSF) TI-2322346 [US$ 275,000], ``STTR Phase I: Patient-Specific System for Early Detection and Identification of Epileptic Seizures “, Saba Mehmood (PI), Fahad Saeed (Co-PI), Oct 2023 - Sept 2024 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) CHE-2304837 [US$ 500,000], ``Development of Multidimensional Ion Mobility-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (IMSn-FT-ICR MSn) Tools for the Characterization of Complex Mixtures”, Francisco Lima (PI), Fahad Saeed (Co-PI), Sept 2023 - August 2026 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) TI-2213951 [US$ 250,000], ``PFI-TT: Artificial Intelligence-enabled Real-time System for Early Epileptic Seizure Detection and Prediction”, Fahad Saeed (PI), August 2022 - July 2024 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) IIP-2143515 [US$ 50,000], ``I-Corps: Utilizing Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Early Detection and Identification of Mental Disorders”, Fahad Saeed (PI), Sept 2021 - Sept 2022 NSF Award Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) Supplemental- 3R01GM134384-02S1[US$ 100,000],”Compute-Cluster for Deep-Learning Models for Mass Spectrometry based Proteomics data” Fahad Saeed (PI), August 2021 - May 2023 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) OAC-2126253 [US$ 400,000], ``CC* Compute: RAPTOR - Reconfigurable Advanced Platform for Transdisciplinary Open Research”, Jason Liu (PI), Jayantha Obeysekera (Co-PI), Keqi Zhang (Co-PI), Cassian D’Cunha (Co-PI), Mike Kirgan (SI), Yuepeng Li (SI), Vasilka Chergarova (SI), Yagya Joshi (SI), Jonathan Casco (SI), and Fahad Saeed (Co-PI), Sept 2021 - Sept 2023 NSF Award Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) Supplemental- 3R01GM134384-01A1S1 [US$ 205,291],”Multimodal Machine-Learning Algorithms for Early Detection, and Classification for Alzheimer Disorder and Related Dementia’s” Fahad Saeed (PI), May 2021 - May 2023 NIH Award Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH), [R01GM134384] [US$ 965,874], “Multimodal Machine-Learning and High Performance Computing Strategies for Big MS Proteomics Data”, Fahad Saeed (PI) with Shu-Ching Chen (Co-Investigator), Jason Liu (Co-Investigator), Francisco Alberto Fernandez-Lima (Co-Investigator), and Sitharama Iyengar (Senior Personal), June 2020 - May 2023 NIH Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) OAC-1925960 [US$ 415,950], “CAREER: Towards Fast and Scalable Algorithms for Big Proteogenomics Data Analytics” Fahad Saeed (PI), Sept 2018-April 2023 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) CCF-1855441 [US$ 7,708], “CRII: SHF: HPC Solutions to Big NGS Data Compression”, Fahad Saeed (PI), Sept 2018 - Jan 31, 2020 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) ACI-1651724 [US$ 499,999], “CAREER: Towards Fast and Scalable Algorithms for Big Proteogenomics Data Analytics” Fahad Saeed (PI), April 2017-April 2019 NSF Award Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) R15GM120820 [US$ 418,533], “Parallel Algorithms for Big Data from Mass Spectrometry based Proteomics” Fahad Saeed (PI), April 2017 - April 2020 NIH Award Page (change of PI when Dr. Saeed changed institution to FIU)
- National Science Foundation (NSF) REU Supplement [US$ 16,000], “CRII: SHF: HPC Solutions to Big NGS Data Compression” Fahad Saeed (PI), Feb 2016 - Feb 2018 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) CCF-1464268 [US$ 171,341], “CRII: SHF: HPC Solutions to Big NGS Data Compression” Fahad Saeed (PI), (Feb 2015 - Feb 2018 NSF Award Page
- National Science Foundation (NSF) CNS-1250264 [US$ 200,000], “EAGER: High Performance Algorithms and Implementations for Biological Sequence Analysis and Genome Alignment” Ashfaq Khokhar, Fahad Saeed (Co-PI) (Sept 2012 - Aug 2015) NSF Award Page
Equipment and Computing Allocations
- Xilinx [US$ 13,195]}, ``Design and development of FPGA based MS omics pipeline”, Fahad Saeed(PI) (Equipment Grant, Versal AI Core EK-VCK190-G FPGA), March 2022
- NSF XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support Service (ECSS) [US$ 50,000,], ``DeepSNAP: Scalable Machine Learning for Mass Spectrometry based Proteomics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), (Jan 2021 - Dec 2021)
- National Science Foundation XSEDE ASC200004 [125,000.0 Service Units (SU)/10,000.0 GB SDSC Medium-term disk storage (Data Oasis)/10,000.0 GPU Hours/75,000 Core hours on Clusters: US$ 43,161.42], ``DeepSNAP: Scalable Machine Learning for Mass Spectrometry based Proteomics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), (Jan 2021 - Dec 2021)
- National Science Foundation XSEDE ASC200004 [100,000.0 Service Units (SU)/10,000.0 GB SDSC Medium-term disk storage (Data Oasis)/5,000.0 GPU Hours: US$ 6,190], “DeepSNAP: Scalable Machine Learning for Mass Spectrometry based Proteomics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), (March 2020 - Sept 2020)
- Intel Altera [US$ 7,900], “MS proteomics analysis using reconfigurable hardware”, Fahad Saeed(PI) (Equipment Grant, DE10-PRO-SX FPGA), Nov 2019
- National Science Foundation XSEDE supplemental grant TG-CCR150017 [30,000 Service Units (SU)/6TB SDSC Disk Storage/2500 GPU Hours: US$ 450], “Smart Index and Search for De Novo Proteogenomics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), (March 2019 - June 2020)
- National Science Foundation XSEDE renewal grant TG-CCR150017 [30,000 Service Units (SU)/6TB SDSC Disk Storage/2500 GPU Hours: US$ 3,159], “Smart Index and Search for De Novo Proteogenomics”, Fahad Saeed (PI), (March 2019 - March 2020)
- NVIDIA [US$ 1149], “High Performance Algorithms for Big Data Proteomics” Fahad Saeed (PI) (Equipment Grant for NVIDIA TITAN Xp GPU), August 2018
- National Science Foundation XSEDE renewal grant TG-CCR150017 [30,000 Service Units (SU)/6TB SDSC Disk Storage: US$ 6564], “A Distributed-Shared Memory Strategy to Speedup the Compression of Big Next-Generation Sequencing Datasets” Fahad Saeed (PI), (June 2016 - June 2018)
- National Science Foundation XSEDE startup grant TG-CCR150017 [30,000 Service Units (SU)], “Scalability study of compression algorithms for peta scale NGS data” Fahad Saeed (PI), (June 2015 - June 2016)
- Intel Altera [US$ 16,000], “Short Reads mapping to the genome using reconfigurable hardware” Fahad Saeed(PI) (Equipment Grant, 2 DE5-NET-450 FPGA’s), April 2014
- NVIDIA [US$ 5499], “High Performance Algorithms for Genome Alignments” Fahad Saeed (PI) (Equipment Grant for Tesla K40 GPU), Feb 2014
Intramural Grants
- Office of Vice President of Research,Western Michigan University (WMU) [US$ 129,570], “Scalable Algorithms for Big Proteogenomics Data Analytics” Fahad Saeed (PI), April 2017 - April 2020
- College and Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS), Western Michigan University (WMU) [US$ 41,650], “Developing HPC solutions to big fMRI data” Fahad Saeed (PI), April 2017 - June 2018</span></p>
Recent Media Coverage
- "Wearable devices could help predict seizures", FIU News, August 2022 Article Link
- "NIH Awards FIU $1M to Develop Machine Learning Algorithms to Study Proteins", HPC Wire, June 2020 Article Link
- "FIU researchers think of a way to speed up a vaccine for COVID-19", Miami Herald, June 2020 Article Link
- "Research Grant Helps FIU Professor Reach One Step Closer To Coronavirus Vaccine", FIU PantherNow, July 2020 Article Link
- "NIH awards FIU $1M to develop machine-learning algorithms to study proteins - important for understanding, treating diseases", FIU News, June 2020 Article Link
- "Dr. Saeed awarded prestigious $1 Million R01 grant from National Institute of Health", SCIS FIU News, May 2020 Article Link
- Distinguished Research and Creative Scholarship Award: Fahad Saeed",OVPR WMU, March 2018 Description YouTube
- Algorithms for Life, WMU Annual Magazine, Summer 2017
- Rising Stars in Research, WMU Annual Magazine, Summer 2017
- Researchers Snag a prestigious National Prize, WMU News Link, 2017
- WMU Assistant Professor receives NSF CAREER Award, CEAS WMU Article Link
- Surfing with Algorithms, NSF Science Node, March 2016
- Working with Powerful Supercomputers, WMU CEAS News, July 2015